Tennessee Prisons

Clicking on any of the Tennessee facilities below will direct you to an information page with Inmate Search, Visitation, Mail, Phone, Email, Most Wanted and FAQ for families and friends.

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Tennessee Department of Correction - Prisons and Inmate Search

Tennessee State Prisons and Juvenile Facilities

Tennessee opened its first state penitentiary in Nashville in 1831. The prison system was placed under a Department of Institutions in 1923, and that agency became the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) in 1955. In the 1980s a federal court took oversight of the system over crowding and conditions, and the state was released from that order in 1994.

In November 2024, TDOC’s 14 prisons held about 24,300 people serving felony sentences, and the system was more than 90% full. About 2,500 of them are women. Some people with state sentences are also held in county jails while they wait for a prison bed.

Tennessee was an early adopter of private prisons, turning South Central Correctional Facility over to a private company in 1992 as a test case. Today four of its prisons are run by CoreCivic, the Nashville-based company once known as Corrections Corporation of America.

East Tennessee: Bledsoe County Correctional Complex (Pikeville), Morgan County Correctional Complex (Wartburg) and Northeast Correctional Complex (Mountain City)
Middle Tennessee: Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility and the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center for women, all in Nashville, plus Turney Center Industrial Complex (Hickman County, with an annex in Clifton)
West Tennessee: West Tennessee State Penitentiary and the Women’s Therapeutic Residential Center (both in Henning), Northwest Correctional Complex (Tiptonville) and Mark Luttrell Transition Center (Memphis)
Run by CoreCivic: Trousdale Turner (Hartsville), Hardeman County and Whiteville (both in Whiteville) and South Central (Clifton)

Where do new prisoners go first?

Men sentenced to TDOC are classified at the Bledsoe County Correctional Complex in Pikeville, where staff complete medical and mental health screening and decide each person’s custody level and permanent prison. Women are received and classified at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, formerly the Tennessee Prison for Women.

How to find an inmate in Tennessee

TDOC’s Felony Offender Information Lookup (FOIL) searches by name or TDOC ID number. It shows where the person is assigned, including whether they are still being held in a local jail.

Trouble at Trousdale Turner

The largest prison in the state, CoreCivic’s 2,672-bed Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, opened in 2016 on the site of a canceled nuclear plant. In August 2024 the U.S. Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation, citing at least 196 assaults and 15 deaths in a single year and guard turnover of 188%.

Death penalty in Tennessee

Tennessee has the death penalty. Lethal injection is the main method, but people sentenced for crimes before 1999 may choose the electric chair, and the chair can also be used if drugs are unavailable. Men on death row are held at Riverbend in Nashville, where executions take place. Christa Pike, the only woman on death row, is held at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center.

The state has carried out 17 executions since 1976, six of them in the electric chair. After a pause from 2020 to 2025 for a review of its lethal injection process, Tennessee executed three men in 2025. The year 2026 brought serious trouble. In May, staff spent more than an hour failing to place a backup IV line for Tony Carruthers, and Governor Bill Lee granted a one-year reprieve. The state then executed Anthony Darrell Hines on August 13, 2026, the most recent execution. On September 30 it tried to execute Christa Pike, which would have been the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in more than 200 years. She survived two doses of pentobarbital and was taken to a Nashville hospital, where her lawyers said on October 6 that she was conscious and able to speak but still in critical care. Governor Lee postponed all remaining executions for 2026 and ordered an independent review; her lawyers have asked him to commute her sentence.

Famous Tennessee prisons

Two closed prisons remain well known. The castle-like Tennessee State Prison in Nashville, which held the state’s executions from 1916 to 1960, closed in 1992 and has appeared in several movies. Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, from which James Earl Ray briefly escaped in 1977, closed in 2009 and is now open for tours.

Tennessee juvenile facilities

Youth committed by a juvenile court are placed with the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS). Its only state-run secure facility is the John S. Wilder Youth Development Center in Fayette County, for boys ages 13 to 18 who need the highest level of security. DCS also contracts with private providers, including the 24-bed Mountain View program. The state is spending about $333 million to rebuild Wilder and the Woodland Hills Youth Development Center in Nashville, after lawsuits over abuse, isolation and the treatment of youth with disabilities. Youth awaiting court are held in county juvenile detention centers, which are scarce in rural West Tennessee. Juvenile records are confidential, so families should contact the youth’s DCS case manager.

To search for an inmate or juvenile, or to learn how to visit, call, write or send money to someone in the Tennessee Department of Correction or Department of Children’s Services, choose a facility from the list below.